Czech ScienceNational Library's rare prints and manuscripts at the click of a mouse

Some thirteen years ago the Czech National Library first started a
pioneering project in which it turns rare documents into digital form. Its
experts even devised a special format for the digitisation which was later
adopted as a UNESCO standard. For its preservation efforts, the library
was given a UNESCO award earlier this year. In this edition of Czech
Science, we take you to the historic building of the Czech National
Library in Prague where the oldest manuscripts meet with the most advanced
technology.

Klementinum library
The corridors of Prague's historic Klementinum library are buzzing with the
voices of students. Long gone are the days when its contents were
accessible only to a chosen few. But thanks to modern technologies,
everybody will soon be able to leaf through even the most precious
manuscripts once belonging to kings and monks at the click of a mouse.

"It's a long story. It started in 1992 when an official from UNESCO
came to our library and asked us to do a pilot project for the 'Memory of
the World' programme. So it started on a very, very small scale in
1992-93. In routine we started to produce digitised manuscripts and old
printed books in 1995-96 when we built the first digitisation centre in
the National Library."

Adolf Knoll
The National Library's Adolf Knoll, one of the people behind the
digitisation project. He is also co-author of a special format, used for
digitising rare library materials, which has been adopted as a UNESCO
standard.

In another wing of the former Baroque monastery which now houses the Czech
National Library, work is in progress on the scanning of old documents.
Stepan Cernohorsky of the company AIP which is responsible for the
technical part of the digitisation is showing me around what looks like a
photographic studio.

"Now we are in the digitising studio. You can see the process of
digitisation of a historical monument. What we see here is a medieval
manuscript. We are standing inside the digitisation device. It's a special
photographic camera which is equipped with a scanning wall or a scanning
back, we can say. So we are using perfect studio photographic equipment
and the digital data are created by a scanning chip."

"Yes, definitely. The whole process of digitisation has to be as safe
as possible. We take care of these documents as if we were 'handling
babies'. You can see that there are some cradles that hold the document in
position while we work with it. All the lights that we are using are safe
and carefully chosen for this purpose. We are using filtration of UV and
infrared while digitising, so everything is done to be as safe as
possible."

For example, the digital image of the "Chronicle of Dalimil", a
14th century parchment book recently acquired by the National Library, is
indeed true to the original. You can see even minute details, the colours
match perfectly and gilded patches indeed glitter on the computer screen.
Stepan Cernohorsky again.

The digitisation of Zlutice hymn-book, photo: AiP Beroun"In these devices we are capable of 50 and 70 mega pixels. So that is
quite a high resolution accomplished when we think about ordinary cameras
which typically range from 10 up to 16 mega pixels. What is important is
that for reproduction purposes we are getting perfect images, very high
quality data. For each pixel in this digital image we have very accurate
colour information, which is very important because the digitisation is
here for the purpose of protecting these documents. In case of some
accident, some catastrophe when the originals would be lost, these perfect
digital copies are sufficient to be used for printing of a perfect copy of
the original."

But preservation of the visual features of the documents is only one part
of the digitisation project. Adolf Knoll again.

Velislav's Bible, photo: AiP Beroun"Another part is production of metadata - we must structure the
documents. It means that what exists in the originals must exist bound
together in virtual space. There are some tools that interconnect the
images and the other files and make them look like a book on the internet
for example."

With three volumes on average digitised every week, since the beginning of
the project, some 1,700 documents have been digitised which represents just
under a million digital images of old prints, manuscripts and maps.

"The second digitisation programme concerns old manuscripts and other
documents printed on acid paper. Because you know that acid paper becomes
brittle and the documents are on the way to disappearing. There we have
around 2 million pages digitised to date."

Memoria.cz, photo: AiP Beroun
The user data of those documents are accessible through the internet.
Accessing the actual images is more complicated but things are improving.

"We have two digital libraries. One contains manuscripts, old printed
books and maps and the other one, called 'Kramerius' after the first
newspaper publisher in Prague, contains digitised periodicals. Of course,
there are some problems for the outside user to use some files because in
Kramerius we have a lot of documents that are under copyright. So we must
respect the copyright law. So in this way some more recent works are
accessible only in the library or in libraries that hold the originals.
The free works are accessible everywhere. In the first digital library is
called Manuscriptorium, there we have some licensing policy that's now
going to be reshaped and it will be a bit more free for access."

Jikji award
For its efforts in the digitisation project, the Czech National Library
was presented with UNESCO's new "Jikji" Memory of the World
award in September. Soon it is about to join an important international
project.

"I think nowadays the most important project is the so-called The
European Library. That's in fact a portal which makes accessible and
searchable all the collections of the participating European national
libraries and we as one of the newcomers to the European Union are about
to be included in this at the beginning of next year."

The Czech National Library's oldest collections have a lot to offer even
to the foreign reader. Besides medieval manuscripts from Bohemia, they
contain also early manuscripts from Arab countries, India, Turkey or
Persia.